A Woman's Education (Pt. 1)
Deep Read Live at Miu Miu Literary Club, Milan
DEEP READ #36 is with writer, critic and translator, Lauren Elkin. This episode was recorded live at Miu Miu Literary Club, which took place at the Circolo Filologico Milanese on 9th-10th April 2025. Listen to Deep Read #36 [Apple | Spotify].
Miu Miu Literary Club 2025 is the latest in a series of cultural experiences devised by Miu Miu to promote the arts. The inaugural Literary Club, Writing Life, which took place in April 2024, brought back into focus the work of Italian feminist authors Sibilla Aleramo and Alba De Céspedes.
Under the direction of Mrs Miuccia Prada, and now in its second iteration, the event this year explores the subjects of girlhood, love and sex education through the work of two international literary masters, French existentialist, Simone de Beauvoir, and Fumiko Enchi, the pen-name for Fumi Ueda, among the most prominent female authors of the Shöwa era in Japan.
Lauren Elkin translated Simone de Beauvoir’s posthumously published book ‘The Inseparables’ - a focus text for this year’s Miu Miu Literary Club - and she has written numerous non-fiction books and novels. These include 2024’s ‘Scaffolding’, which explores the ethics of desire, the transition from girlhood to womanhood, and the impact that formative teachers can have on our lives. I loved Lauren’s novel and its smart, sexy portrayal of women’s lives unfolding in the same Parisian apartment, half a century apart. It was a pleasure to speak with her in Milan.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Phoebe
LAUREN ELKIN: DEEP READING LIST
“When she came over to see my schoolbooks, I looked at her with respect; she took notes in her pretty, already well-formed handwriting, and I thought of her swollen thigh under her little pleated skirt. Nothing so interesting had ever happened to me. It suddenly seemed as if nothing had ever happened to me at all.”
‘The Inseparables’, Simone de Beauvoir
“Everything that she had suffered for, worked for, and won within the restricted sphere of a life whose key she had for decades past entrusted to her wayward husband Yukitomo lay within the confines of that unfeeling, hard, and unassailable fortress summed up by the one word: ‘family.’ No doubt, she had held her own in that small world. In a sense, all the strength of her life had gone into doing just that; but now in the light of the lamps of these small houses that so cheerlessly lined one side of the street she had suddenly seen the futility of that somehow artificial life on which she had lavished so much energy and wisdom. Was it possible, then, that everything she had lived for was vain and profitless?”
‘The Waiting Years’, Fumiko Enchi
“Some people are moulded by their aspirations, others by their hostilities.”
‘The Death of the Heart’, Elizabeth Bowen
“I too wanted to forget that girl. Really forget her, that is, stop yearning to write about her. Stop thinking that I have to write about this girl and her desire and madness, her idiocy and pride, her hunger and her blood that ceased to flow. I have never managed to do so.”
‘A Girl's Story’, Annie Ernaux
“I know it's not clothes that make women beautiful or otherwise, nor beauty care, nor expensive creams, nor the distinction of costliness of their finery. I know the problem lies elsewhere. I don't know where. I only know it isn't where women think.”
‘The Lover’, Marguerite Duras
“Everything in the culture tries to convince us that if we are truly in love with the right person, we will be as one with them. It isn't true. We are always each other's others.”
‘Scaffolding’, Lauren Elkin
“I walk because it confers- or restores- a feeling of placeness...I walk because, somehow, it's like reading. You're privy to these lives and conversations that have nothing to do with yours, but you can eavesdrop on them. Sometimes it's overcrowded; sometimes the voices are too loud. But there is always companionship. You are not alone. You walk in the city side by side with the living and the dead.”
‘Flâneuse: Women Walk The City’, Lauren Elkin